Elmer is computational tool for multi-

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

problems. It has been developed by CSC in collaboration with

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

universities, research laboratories and industry. Elmer FEM solver is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, subject to the requirements of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

(GPL), version 2 or any later. Elmer includes physical models of

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) a ...

structural mechanics Structural mechanics or Mechanics of structures is the computation of deformations, deflections, and internal forces or stresses (''stress equivalents'') within structures, either for design or for performance evaluation of existing structures. ...

electromagnetics In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...

heat transfer Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy ( heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conducti ...

and

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acousticia ...

, for example. These are described by partial differential equations which Elmer solves by the

Finite Element Method The finite element method (FEM) is a popular method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat ...

(FEM). Elmer comprises several different parts: * ElmerGrid – A mesh conversion tool, which can be used to convert differing mesh formats into Elmer-suitable meshes. * ElmerGUI – A graphical interface which can be used on an existing mesh to assign physical models, this generates a "case file" which describes the problem to be solved. Does not show the whole ElmerSolver functionality in GUI. * ElmerSolver – The numerical solver which performs the finite element calculations, using the mesh and case files. * ElmerPost – A post-processing/visualisation module. (Development stopped in favour of other post-processing tools such as ParaView, VisIt, etc.) The different parts of Elmer software may be used independently. Whilst the main module is the ElmerSolver tool, which includes many sophisticated features for physical model solving, the additional components are required to create a full workflow. For pre- and post-processing other tools, such as

Paraview ParaView is an open-source multiple-platform application for interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client–server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail (LOD) models to maintain in ...

can be used to visualise the output. The software runs on Unix and Windows platforms and can be compiled on a large variety of compilers, using the

CMake In software development, CMake is cross-platform free and open-source software for build automation, testing, packaging and installation of software by using a compiler-independent method. CMake is not a build system itself; it generates a ...

building tool. The solver can also be used in a multi-host parallel mode on platforms that support

MPI MPI or Mpi may refer to: Science and technology Biology and medicine * Magnetic particle imaging, an emerging non-invasive tomographic technique * Myocardial perfusion imaging, a nuclear medicine procedure that illustrates the function of the hear ...

. Elmer's parallelisation capability is one of the strongest sides of this solver.

External links

References

{{CAE software Numerical software Free computer-aided design software Finite element software for Linux Free software programmed in Fortran Free science software Computational physics Engineering software that uses Qt Computer-aided engineering software for Linux Software that uses Tk (software)